I was a part of the half of the class that read the New London Group’s 1996 version of A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies. First off, I’d like to state that I agree wholeheartedly with their affirmation of the existence of what they call “multiliteracies” – a term coined to embrace the plurality of languages and literacies that span over different cultures and communities. It’s important to acknowledge as we become more and more globalized as time goes on and technological innovations increase the proximity of what the authors call “subcultural differences”. The proliferation of the internet (more specifically blogs, social media etc.) has certainly made this a reality in ways the New London Group circa 1996 could not have imagined.

That being said, at about the end of page 8, it’s claimed that not only are issues of cultural and linguistic diversity critically important issues, it follows that there can no longer be a cultural and linguistic standard to be taught to our students. They propose that access to power and cultural/linguistic capital should be possible no matter what the student’s “identity marker” (i.e. dialect, language and register) happens to be. As much as I’d like to throw in with this proposal, I’m not so sure we live in a society progressive enough for this line of thinking to be realistic. As a teacher, I would not feel comfortable telling my students that they live in a world where the meaning of literacy has actually changed such that they can survive using simply their own “identity markers”, instead of adopting the cultural and linguistic standards of the dominant class. I’d venture to guess that the authors of this piece attained their privileged position amongst the academic elite by speaking the uniform language of the powerful, and NOT through their own personal idiolects. They no doubt earned their right in society to criticize the idea of having “one cultural and linguistic standard” by adhering to that very cultural and linguistic standard. I think the same is true in 2013 as it was 17 years ago when this piece was first published.

I have a crazy weekend ahead of me, so I thought I’d do my blog early this time around.

From what I’ve gathered this far into this course, this idea of the “social” meaning of literacy seems to be a ubiquitous theme. It firstly brought to mind Brandt’s “Sponsors of Literacy” piece, in which we’re acquainted with the notion that wherever literacy learning occurs, powerful external agents (or “sponsors”) are present that enable – or even inhibit – learning. According to Brandt, “obligations towards one’s sponsors run deep, affecting what, why, and how people write and read” (Brandt 168). Literacy is not, Brandt would argue, something solitary, something individually motivated. External forces are inexorably intertwined with one’s literacy practices. This idea of social and cultural forces “sponsoring” literacy, to me, is a variation on the same theme that animates Scribner’s piece “Literacy in Three Metaphors”. Before she fleshes out these titular metaphors, she says, “Literacy abilities are acquired by individuals only in the course of participation in socially organized activities with written language” (Scribner 14). She goes on to point out that what qualifies as individual literacy is relative to what the social qualifications for literacy are (I hope I’m articulating her points sufficiently here!) on the same page. Again, this idea that social and cultural forces shape literacy is pretty ubiquitous. In Brandt’s other piece “Accumulating Literacy: Writing and Learning to Write in the Twentieth Century”, this view of literacy is pushed again. This time we’re acquainted with Genna and Michael May, both of whom developed literacy practices that were directly informed (sponsored?) by the culture and time period they lived in – Genna being raised in a spare, rural social context where literacy standards ended at what we’d now call an elementary level, and Michael in a modern, suburban social context where print media was abundant and access to education was readily available (not to mention necessary for survival in a largely bureaucratized society). I’ve come to accept similar conclusions about myself: like Dwayne Lowry of Brandt’s “Sponsors…” article who was required to change his literacy practices to meet the demands of his ever-changing profession, I’ve had to alter my literacy practices to survive as an employee of the Technology and Learning Program on campus. As a result of that job, I’ve had to become literate in the Blackboard Learn learning management system in order to perform my duties of troubleshooting and finding solutions for faculty members who choose to use it. My literacy continually changes as the system is upgraded and new tools are added or we’re required to support new technologies for use by faculty members, just as Lowry was required to shift his literacy practices as the job became more and more cumbersome, tedious and bureaucratized. Again, these example serve to illustrate that literacy is understood better in social terms rather than individual ones.

 

 

For my interview, I talked with my mother. I asked her the following question:

“In the next ten years, what will reading and writing become? What skills and understandings about online literacy will people need to have? Why?”

Below is my summary of her response:

She predicts that the Internet will fundamentally change how we view literacy. For example, the Internet, she asserts, increases and democratizes access to information in a way that we’ve never seen before. Of course, this is provided one has access to a computer, but as time goes on the means by which one can access information online only increases. Accompanied with simple access to the wealth of information online, new skills in literacy are required to navigate it – skills in critical thinking and critical consumption of information in particular. What to listen to and what to tune out is not always obvious, and required its own separate skill set.

“The strongest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter.” – Winston Churchill (supposedly)

I couldn’t help but think of this quote as I read though the section “Literacy as Power”. The extent to which you can be an informed participant in the democratic process is inexorably intertwined with your literacy. I would even say that your literacy level in American society – barring generational wealth – is your key to any semblance of power in American society. How do you formulate a critical, informed opinion of a bill come election season if you’re not even able to define the words in the text of the bill itself? How are you able to avoid manipulation at the hands of crooked political candidates if you are only able to comprehend glittering generalities and deliberate oversimplifications of complex issues?

I’d always agreed with Paulo Freire, who was paraphrased in the Scribner article. In his view, “effective literacy education…creates a critical consciousness through which a community can analyze its conditions of social existence and engage in effective action for a just society” (page 18). Seems legit, right? I was certainly surprised to read soon after that studies of UNESCO’s “experimental world literacy program” revealed that higher levels of literacy did not necessarily lead to improved social conditions. In fact, it’s suggested that the opposite was true – increases in social conditions preceded increases in literacy. In hindsight, it makes sense that literacy activities are something of a first world luxury! It must be hard to care much about critically examining party platforms when you’re struggling to make ends meet. So perhaps it would benefit us all if we improved the social conditions of those afflicted with poverty and powerlessness in our country – maybe then those groups will be able to increase their literacy.

 

Hello folks, my name is Jon and I’m a junior, majoring in English Education. I was born and raised in Chico, and decided to stay in town after high school because of the convenience and (relatively) cheap tuition of Chico State. My ultimate goal after graduation is still a bit fuzzy, but lately I’ve been entertaining the thought of teaching abroad. It sounds like an opportunity for a rich, fulfilling experience, and it’s about time I find a way to get out of the country.

In Szwed’s article, he appears to be making an argument for shifting the way we currently think about literacy (that is, on a “single continuum from reader to non-reader”) to that of a “plurality of literacies” (423), which breaks down the idea of literacy into 5 elements – text, context, function, participants and motivation. This means good news for me, because much of what I read on a daily basis is online – news articles, music and film reviews, blog postings, message board forums and the like. While I read novels on occasion, my free time spent reading fiction and nonfiction novels – often seen as a person’s measure of literacy – is dwarfed by my consumption of digital media.

I think this fits into Szwed’s question of social context with regards to literacy, and what texts a reader chooses to read. I choose to read online texts like that which I outlined above because it feels more relevant to my generation and my culture than, say, spending my free time reading Moby Dick or Anna Karenina. Much of the time I’d rather spend an evening listening to music and reading Wikipedia articles. Am I less literate than someone who does the reverse? Would I be more literate than someone who’s never read a novel of his/her own choosing but is a gifted sightreader of sheet music? What about freestyle rapping, or perhaps someone who prefers spending time teaching him/herself how to read and write HTML? The examples are endless. Some of my classmates who took Fox’s Rhetoric and Writing with me might even remember my bizarre interest in transgressive European heavy metal music, which I am eager to find an excuse to weave into a future blog post! It would be short sighted, elitist and useless to judge one example as more “literate” than another – they’re just different. Our differing skills and interests in literacy dispel the notion of literacy as a dichotomy; rather, the texts we choose to engage with reflect its social use and context to the reader, to paraphrase one of Szwed’s key concepts. These examples simply exemplify the reality of Szwed’s plurality of literacies.

That’s ultimately what I took from this article – the notion of literacy being a vast complex of different skills and interests informed by social function and context, rather than the oversimplified idea that one reads or doesn’t read – end of story.